


Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

by Violent_entertainment



Category: Highlander: The Series, The Red Winter Trilogy - Annette Marie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violent_entertainment/pseuds/Violent_entertainment
Summary: Otherwise known as, "The Most Unlikely Fandoms to Ever Receive a Crossover Fanfic"When you've lived for thousands of years, it seems statistically likely you would run into other beings that have also been around for thousands of years, even if you only do so accidentally. And immortals aren't the only game in town right now, as Methos is extremely unhappy to learn.
Kudos: 12





	Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the second book, right when Izanami's flunky shows up after Emi goes to Shion to get help, but mentions stuff that is revealed in the third book.

“I must take you to Izanami for your own good, child,” the kami stated. He started forward with gliding steps, his sohei following him. “I do hope you will not _resist_ our aid.”

Terror filled Emi – if he touched her, it would be over. He could kill her or put her in a magical coma in seconds – before suddenly Katsuo appeared in front of her, one hand on the hilt of his katana.

“The kamigakari asked you to leave the shrine,” Katsuo said firmly, as unafraid as if he wasn’t facing down an actual god, even a minor one.

The kami, appearing annoyed more than cowed, stopped a few steps away from the sohei, his own guardians flanking him.

The standoff was broken by the rapid pounding of approaching feet – more than one set, causing all present to tense. Who was arriving, and whose side where they on?

Two men swiftly came into view – a westerner in a worn black trench coat sprinting up the stone steps to the shrine like the hounds of hell were after him, followed by a Japanese man with what appeared to be a baseball bag slung over his shoulder, bouncing against his back with every stride, not far behind and rapidly gaining. 

Physically barging through the shrine attendants who didn’t jump out of his way fast enough, the westerner crossed the final tori gate and skidded to a stop in the courtyard proper, his momentum carrying him a few more steps forward before he spun to face his pursuer. Bending over to lean his hands on his knees and pant, a triumphant grin lit his face.

Seeing his target paused and waiting, the second man slowed, and made his final approach at a light, unhurried jog, a scowl on his face as he stopped just short of crossing beneath the tori. 

She might have thought it had simply been an ill-advised and _extremely_ unfortunately timed race between friends before the man with the baseball bag spoke. 

“You can’t hide on holy ground forever, Pierson!” His fuming voice rang out in clear tones through the courtyard, not hushed at all by the trees on either side of him. 

The man, apparently named Pierson, merely laughed, although not without an uneasy glance to the crowd of bristling sohei and kannushi surrounding him, as though only just registering their presence, and their clear attention on him. 

“Well, Sato, I guess we’ll find out which one of us is more patient, won’t we,” he replied in English, softer but no less audible, voice brimming with mirthful confidence. 

With a sneer, the man identified as Sato called up to the nearest kannushi in the group. 

“Don’t let that man in. He’s just another fool tourist who doesn’t respect or care to understand our gods or our ways. Kick him out now, before he does something truly disrespectful and causes trouble. I’ll take him away for you.”

Pierson frowned at the slandering and Emi did too. It was true enough that Shion wasn’t some kitschy tourist attraction – it was a very serious, active shrine – the largest of its kind and where much of the actual business of running the nation’s many other Amaterasu shrines was conducted. But she still got the feeling Sato had other reasons for wanting Pierson not to be allowed to stay. To...what had he said? _To hide_? Hide from what? 

But at the moment, whatever he was hiding from couldn’t be worse that what he’d run straight into. 

The kami partially turned away from Emi to face the newcomer, eyes flicking to the second man on the other side of the courtyard gate and then back again.

“I know what you are,” the kami stated humorlessly. Though he was facing the westerner, something told Emi he was speaking to both men.

“Really, this is too much,” Pierson complained. “I know American tourists don’t exactly have the best reputation, but that doesn’t mean you should kick me out before I’ve even done anything! I don’t have any intention of doing anything disrespectful, excusing, ah,” he glanced at the crowd, “if I’ve already interrupted a ceremony.”

“Sato,” he chided like one would to a friend, “you should have warned me the shrine was closed to visitors today! We could have _met_ somewhere else.”

The kami’s lip curled in disgust. “Filthy cockroaches. Rest easy, I have no intention of interfering in your little Game, but nor can I let you get in the way before my business is completed here.” 

Gesturing at his sohei, he very casually commanded, “Kill them both. But take care to leave their heads on their shoulders. I simply don’t have time to deal with the mess that would cause.”

As the first sohei took a step forward, Sato immediately turned and disappeared into the trees rather than retreat back down the steps and make an easy target of himself. When the sohei turned back to his lord for direction, the kami sighed and jerked his chin toward Pierson. 

Rather than give chase to the mysterious Sato, both sohei now advanced on the American, who was looking increasingly frantic, eyes wide and darting obvious looks back to the tori gate, as if he was considering his chances of following Sato’s lead and making for the treeline without one of them catching him first.

“Are- are you serious? I think there’s been some misunderstanding!” He raised his hands defensively, pleadingly, in front of him as they both drew their swords.

“You don’t have to do this, you really don't want to do this. Can’t we talk things out?”

“Stay away from him!” Emi cried desperately, taking a step froward but held back by Katsuo. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this!”

Heat pulsed in her kamigakari mark as power rushed down her outstretched hand, whipping up a fierce wind from nowhere and sending it scything through the courtyard just as steel met steel in an ear-shattering crash of weapons colliding.

Panicked screams followed from the watching shrine servants. The kami’s guardians had been knocked to the ground by the blast of wind, but Pierson remained on his feet. And he was now holding a _sword_ he'd drawn from seemingly nowhere, a huge, straight broadsword that reminded her more of King Arthur movies than the sleek, curved katanas she was used to.

At the sight, the Amaterasu shrine sohei had also drawn their blades, half converging on Pierson and the other half encircling the kami.

“Enough of this!” the kami roared. “That paltry breeze may send a few humans stumbling, but you haven’t lived long enough to see the day it will stop one like me!”

With a sharp slash of his hand, the earth began rumbling, sending the remaining sohei and kannushi to the ground, and opening a crack directly beneath her feet.

She leaped back with a terrified shriek, and the wind lifted and caught her, sending her higher and farther than any natural jump would have. From the corner of her eye, she saw Pierson stagger up, using his sword as a crutch to steady himself before running and swinging at the kami.

The kami swung around and dodged, before reaching out a hand to try to kill the poor human with a touch. “Stay out of this!” he screeched in anger.

This was her only chance to escape, while he was still distracted! Her plan to get help from Guji Ishida had failed spectacularly. ‘Not that Ishida can refute Izanami is up to no good after this,’ she thought bitterly. But the kami only wanted her. If she left, he’d hopefully leave the shrine and all its attendants behind unharmed. 

She needed to get back to Shiro and Yumei! She took off at a run, away from the main tori gate, unfortunately, as the kami was still standing between her and that exit. The wind still pressed heavy as a hurricane against her back, speeding her along, until a crow swooped overhead. 

“Yumei!” she shouted, waving her arms. “Yumei, we need to leave _now_!” 

The crow flapped its wings, hovering in place, and seemed to triple in size, before swooping down, talons extended, to grab her shoulders. 

She spun around and backed away, holding her arms up in a gesture to stop. “Wait, wait! There’s one more! A westerner! At the front gate by the kami. We need to take him too!” 

Shadows rippled and expanded over the enormous bird, crackling with ominous red light in their depths, until the more familiar human shape of the Tengu emerged from within. 

“Why?” he demanded. 

“The kami is going to kill him if we don’t,” she cried, breathless.

“A kami of Izanami wouldn’t hesitate to kill _any_ human standing between you and him,” Yumei replied dismissively, grabbing her wrist and intending to rescue her by force, if necessary.

“But the kami wants to kill him _specifically_!”

He paused. “Fine,” he agreed begrudgingly, before swinging her up into a princess carry. Enormous glossy black wings snapped out of his back, raising them up in the air to retreat to the main entrance once again.

\---

Yumei dropped them both in a snowy clearing in his woods, none too gently and from a few feet above the ground. The snow wasn’t even thick enough to cushion much of the fall, causing her to rub at her sore behind. Just in time for Shiro to appear and catch her at it with a smirk on his face, sending her blushing to her roots. 

Pierson had hit the ground and immediately backpedaled on all fours until his back hit a tree, and he was now eyeing them all warily. 

“Who’s that one?” Shiro asked, jerking a thumb at the American at the same moment Emi had turned to him and asked, “How do you know Yumei?”

By the time they’d arrived, Pierson had been disarmed, his broadsword lying several yards away, sticking...ugh, sticking out of the chest of one of the kami’s guards. She had a queasy inkling it had been abandoned because the force of the blow had thrust it out the other side and lodged it into the ground.

Pierson had seemed to be trying to make his way toward a dropped katana lying near a – hopefully only unconscious – Shion guard, but the kami hadn’t been making it easy, doing his best to tear up the courtyard and crush the man in one of the gaps. 

When Pierson glanced up at the massive shadow racing toward him, his eyes went wide with disbelief, then narrow in anger, and she distinctly saw his lips form the words, “him? Again?” 

Back in the clearing, Pierson had cautiously leveraged himself to his feet, back still tight against the tree. 

“Know?” he laughed a little hysterically. “How do I know the half-crow man? I don’t _know_ him, I don’t know _you_! I don’t know where I am! I just wanted to visit a shrine and now I’ve been kidnapped by monsters!” 

With one last cautious glance their way, he sidled a short distance into the trees and proceeded to ignore them, pacing in the snow and muttering to himself in English, “clearly, they put the wrong kind of mushrooms in my meal at lunch.”

“I don’t know this human,” Yumei replied, for his own part.

“Yeah,” Shiro laughed. “He’s a grumpy old hermit who never leaves his mountain. While I wouldn’t put it past his _karasu_ , he doesn’t usually make a habit of scaring the wits out of tourists for fun on his weekends.”

“But at the shrine,” Emi pressed, “when he saw Yumei, he said ‘him again.’ _Again_ , like he’s met Yumei before.”

“Did I?” the stranger laughed uncomfortably, apparently resigned to the fact they weren’t going away. “I don’t remember saying that.” He pinched his arm repeatedly, murmuring, “wake up, wake up, wake up,” under his breath. So maybe not so resigned, then. 

Shiro gave him a pitying glance. “This guy is about to hyperventilate. I don’t know why you grabbed him, but let’s just drop him on the side of the road, and let him finally convince himself none of this happened once we’re out of sight.”

“He’s...” Emi threw her hands up in frustration. “He’s faking it! He’s not some random tourist. He _recognized_ Yumei, and the kami recognized _him_ , and he had a sword!”

She yelped as snow kicked up as Shiro suddenly crossed the clearing and grabbed Pierson, dragging him back into the center of the circle created by the kitsune, Tengu, and kamigakari. Pierson had reacted near instantaneously to Shiro's movement, but still a fraction of a second too slow to escape. 

Crushing the man’s wrist in one hand and patting him down with the other, Shiro threw him to his knees, letting go of his wrist only long enough to wrench off his long coat. Then he kicked the man into the snow and held him down with a foot on his back while he twisted the coat inside out to reveal strange straps and buckles that she couldn’t quite understand the function of at first, until she realized it must have been how he’d hidden the sword – the fall and drape of the garment so cleverly designed so as to never reveal the shape of the blade beneath when worn. 

“Interesting,” Shiro said, his tone dark. “Why don’t you take another look, Tengu. See if he pings anything after all.”

Releasing his foot from the man’s back, Shiro stepped back and let Yumei step forward. 

Pierson sat up, but wisely didn’t try to get to his feet. His arms wrapped around himself to protect against the cold wind.

After a long, long moment of study, Yumei’s eyes gradually showed recognition. “Ah, these features do...bring to mind someone I encountered in the past. It was only briefly, and long enough ago that it took a moment to dredge up the memory.”

“I don’t know you. I’ve never met you. Please let me go,” Pierson chattered through clenched teeth. 

“I likely would not have taken note of his face at all, but foreigners were not as common a sight here in the 14th century as they are now,” Yumei went on. 

“Ha! 14th century? You realize it’s the 21st, right?” Pierson asked, slipping from fear into devil-may-care rudeness. “This is the weirdest accidental drug trip I’ve ever had, I can say that with certainty. Am I really in Japan,” he mused miserably aloud to himself, “or is this Wonderland? Will I see the white rabbit next?” 

“I don’t understand,” Emi asked, brow furrowed in confusion. “Are you sure it was that long ago? Is he...maybe the descendant of the man you met?”

“No, this is the man,” Yumei answered decisively. “I distinctly remember him killing one of my daitengu,” he said, the last half a furious growl.

All the fear and anxiety dropped off Pierson’s face in an instant, replaced with the furious sneer under the mask. “I only wish I’d killed more! If I’d killed every last one of them, I could have spared myself burning alive along with the shrine when your remaining vassals stole everything that wasn’t nailed down and lit fire to everything that was!”

“Yumei, you did _what_?!” Emi shrieked, at the same time Shiro cut in, urgent, “You were there when the Tengu burnt the Izanagi shrine?”

“I don't see how its any of your business, kitsune,” Pierson shot back, “but yes, I was.”

“You’re a follower of Izanagi, then,” Shiro growled, crouching along Pierson’s back and curling his claws around his neck. 

“Hardly,” Pierson drawled, seeming more annoyed by the threat than afraid – or did she detect a faint stiffening in his shoulders? Judging by Shiro’s grin, she did. 

“His shrine was just a convenient source of sanctuary. Or at least it _was_ , until this war-mongering crow demon sent his army to murder everyone inside.”

“I didn’t send them,” Yumei barked.

“Sure you didn’t,” Pierson snarled right back, sarcastically. “So I’m just misremembering you putting a sword through my chest?” 

“Everyone stop threatening each other!” Emi screamed, unable to take it anymore. When they, surprising, did stop, she put a hand to her brow. 

“Let me just...talk this through. 14th century, so that’s...700 years ago? How are you alive?! ...are you...are you a kamigakari?” 

Her voice went high on the last word, the conclusion she’d draw sending her into a bout of excitement – she’d never met another kamigakari before – and fear – was he on the side of Izanami?

Before either of the yokai could react to the revelation, Pierson snorted. “No, I’m human.”

“Bullshit!” Shiro put in. Bending his nose to Pierson’s neck and breathing deeply, he grudgingly admitted, “you smell human...but there’s something else in there I can’t place.” So saying, he stepped away and rubbed under his nose like he was about to sneeze.

“And if Yumei really did skewer you and set you on fire 700 years ago, I’m having a real time figuring out how you’re still standing here right now.”

“I’m not standing,” Pierson commented dryly, “unless you plan to let me up anytime soon.” 

“Not likely. What are you?”

“I’m just a regular guy.” When Shiro opened his mouth to bark another protest, he added, “who happens to be immortal. _Not_ invulnerable, so please keep your claws out of my neck.”

“But if you’re 700 years old,” Emi continued her line of thought, before being interrupted by another snort. “If you’re over 700 years old,” she amended, “then, can you help us? We’re trying to find the Kunitsukami, but some of them have been missing for longer than a normal human lifespan at least, and we haven’t had any luck asking the other yokai, but if you’ve been around that long, maybe you know something?” 

“Why are you assuming I’ve spent _any_ of the intervening years in Japan?” Pierson sharp back at her, incredulity clear in his voice. “You’re not exactly friendly to foreigners. And after the absolutely _delightful_ reception I got the last time I was here, and now being accosted by headhunters almost as soon as I stepped off the plane, I’m starting to wonder why I ever came back!”

“Please!” She didn’t want to beg, but with their one good lead gone, unless she could find a way to get back in contact with Shion without alerting any of Izanami’s vassals, she would degrade herself to any avenue they hadn’t explored yet so as not to fail Amaterasu. 

“We _need_ to find the Kunitsukami! Anything you could possibly know...maybe you don’t know you know it? Or maybe you know another immortal we could ask? What about that guy who was chasing you?”

Pierson didn’t soften at all under her onslaught of pleas. “He is immortal as well, but I don’t know him and I certainly wouldn’t ask him for any favors.” Holding up a finger to forestall her surge of questions at that frustratingly obtuse answer, he continued, “I don’t know his age, but I can hazard a guess he wouldn’t be any help to you. Most headhunters of his ilk haven't even broken their first century and spend far too much of that time in self-absorbed angst.”

Then something shifted in his eyes. “Tell you what. I consider myself pretty practiced at the art of disappearing, and even better at finding _other_ people who don’t want to be found.” He quirked a small smile. “It used to be my day job. I liked it a lot.” 

Getting to his feet, ignoring Shiro’s bristling and Yumei’s weighty stare, he brushed the snow off his pant legs before crossing his arms. 

“I can take a look into digging up a scent to send your doggie here after. But what’s in it for me?”

“Dog? Get your eyes checked!" Shiro scoffed. 

“It’ll be the literal end of the world if we don’t find them! That should be enough for you!” Emi shot back, folding her own arms aggressively.

“Forgive me if I’ve heard that story more than once before. Give me something I want. I’m not in this for the collective good.”

Emi was panicking inside, but hoped she managed to keep her face cool, calm, and collected like a kamigakari should be. She didn’t know anything about this man. How could she know what to offer? Then something tugged at her from the corner of her mind. 

“You said you were at the Izanagi shrine for sanctuary. And that other immortal, the one you called a _headhunter_. He accused you of _hiding_ at the Shion shrine. You were there for sanctuary again.”

Pierson blinked, and a slow smile crossed his lips. “You’re a smart one. Only an immortal can kill another immortal, so we all play a Game together. Call it ‘There can be only one.’ 

“There’s only two rules, and one is that we can’t fight on holy ground. The Game gets tiring after so many centuries, so I put myself on the bench for a while.”

Yumei caught on first. Stepping forward between Emi and Pierson, he said “I can offer you entry into a place no other immortal human will be able to find you to drag you back into ‘play.’” 

“I’m listening.” 

“If you find the hidden Kinitsukami, I will give you entrance into Tsuchi.” 

“The realm of the yokai,” Pierson mused. “It’s real, then. How interesting. But it’s also full of man-eating monsters. And I couldn’t help but notice you’re offering entry, not sanctuary.”

“You seem able to hold your own,” Yumei pointed out cooly. 

“Fair enough,” Pierson grinned grimly. “The point was not to have to fight at all, but a realm with no other immortals? Very tempting...Alright. You have a deal.

“I may be a few millennia out of practice, but I’ve never had a problem before letting others know I’m something to be feared,” he said softly. Emi couldn’t help but shiver at his tone, before he shrugged and the atmosphere was suddenly light again. 

“And I suppose if I don’t like it, I can always leave and try Tibet again. If you can get me back to civilization, I can get started right away.”

He grimaced. “Ah, no. First, I’m going to need a new sword.”

**Author's Note:**

> Why is this so long when pretty much nothing happens? Why did I write this instead of working on my actually popular fic? Is Methos OOC, and I'm simply justifying it with the argument we don't really know his real personality because he's always playing to his audience's expectations? The world may never know.


End file.
